Over the nearly three decades of this site and blog we’ve read and written a fair bit about humor. So what makes this current title such an outstanding contribution on the topic is the way the author singles out wisecracks for his particular attention and differentiates them from general comedy. In his words, “wisecracks…are intentional bits of humor whose funniness is found not just in their formal features but also in their interpersonal features.” It is that interpersonal nature that shapes the whole discourse. To put it simply, wisecracks are–almost exclusively–utilized between and among friends and family.

Take, for example, the crack with which Mr. Shoemaker opens the book:

When I told my buddy Mark that I was going to write a book on humor, his immediate response was “But that assumes you know something about it.”

Now that’s what I’m talking about!

No, seriously, that’s what I’m talking about!

This is the kind of gently mocking comment that we accept from a “buddy” but would have sense enough not to make to a stranger, because it risks offending them.

This introduction to the subject is followed by a general discussion of comic theory and what makes things funny. Then by a consideration of when wisecracks might stray past the comic boundaries he establishes into a territory where they might be considered immoral: targeting ethnic groups, public mockery, relying on deception, etc. And, in conclusion, he brushes upon a point I really wish had been his central argument, one I think he expressed more clearly, though still not explicitly, in an essay, Quarrels and Cracks: On the Values of Comic Distraction (David Shoemaker, April 23, 2025, Midwest Studies in Philosophy):

There is a thus a kind of amusement (typically expressed in laughter) that is experienced uniquely in interpersonal relationships, in the funny and mutual give-and-take that occurs only from the participant stance. And it’s that sort of amusement that disappears with the onset of quarrels, and which also signals their end.

The values of this sort of wisecracking are many and seriously underappreciated. First, it’s just plain fun, and it brings people together. People like being around funny people, and funny people like being around people who are amused by their funniness. The enjoyment in wisecracks is often shared. When offering exaggerated accounts of one’s own travails in a funny way, one invites sympathy, and one’s self-deprecating cracks enable bonding with those who’ve undergone similar travails. This and some other types of wisecracking greatly help people cope with the vicissitudes of life (I’ll make much hay over this point later). Wisecracks reduce social uncertainty and distance, and they tend to increase cooperation between people. They can also serve to enforce social norms and group boundaries. As Frances Hutcheson notes, when people are made fun of for their failure to live up to some norm, “the guilty are apt to be made sensible of their folly, more than by a bare grave admonition. . . . Men have been laughed out of faults which a sermon could not reform” (from Reflections Upon Laughter, quote in Morreall 1989: 36–40).

What he has zeroed in on here is that wisecracks are inherently moralistic: they are how we seek to keep ourselves (self-deprecating) and others (ribbing) humble. They are constant reminders of our Fallen nature. As I was reading, I was reminded of the ancient practice of humbling ancient Romans:

Memento Mori is believed to have originated from an ancient Roman tradition.

After a major military victory, the triumphant military generals were paraded through the streets to the roars of the masses. The ceremonial procession could span the course of a day with the military leader riding in a chariot drawn by four horses. There was not a more coveted honor. The general was idolized, viewed as divine by his troops and the public alike. But riding in the same chariot, standing just behind the worshipped general, was a slave. The slave’s sole responsibility for the entirety of the procession was to whisper in the general’s ear continuously, “Respice post te. Hominem te esse memento. Memento mori!”

“Look behind. Remember thou art mortal. Remember you must die!”

The slave served to remind the victor at the peak of glory, this god-like adoration would soon end, while the truth of his mortality remained.
    -History of Memento Mori (Daily Stoic)

Or, to be even more grandiose, recall the best remembered of Christ’s wisecracks: “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone at her.” Considered in this way, we can see wisecracks as a service we render unto one another and it becomes clear why the “interpersonal features” are the pivot upon which they turn. And, in keeping with the theme we have developed over the decades, it becomes obvious that such comedy is profoundly conservative.

(Reviewed:08-Aug-25)

Grade: (B+) Orrin C. Judd

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David Shoemaker Links:

    -WIKIPEDIA: David Shoemaker
    -AUTHOR SITE: David W. Shoemaker
    -TWITTER: @DavidWShoemaker
    -FACULTY PAGE: David Shoemaker Wyn and William Y. Hutchinson Professor in Ethics and Public Life(Sage School of Philosophy, Cornell University)
    -BOOK SITE: Wisecracks: Humor and Morality in Everyday Life by David Shoemaker (University of Chicago Press)
    -BOOK SITE: The Architecture of Blame and Praise: An Interdisciplinary Investigation by David Shoemaker (Oxford University Press)
    -ENTRY: Wisecracks: Humor and Morality in Everyday Life by David Shoemaker (Good Reads)
    -INDEX: Works by David W. Shoemaker (PhilPapers)
    -VIDEO INDEX: David Shoemaker (YouTube)
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    -DISSERTATION: Persons, Selves, and Ethical Theory (David W. Shoemaker, Dissertation, University of California, Irvine, 1996)
    -ESSAY: Caring, Identification, and Agency (David W. Shoemaker, October 2003, Ethics)
    -ESSAY: Utilitarianism and personal identity (David W. Shoemaker, 1999, Journal of Value Inquiry)
    -EXCERPT: from Wisecracks (Google Books)
    -ESSAY: Quarrels and Cracks: On the Values of Comic Distraction ( DAVID SHOEMAKER, April 23, 2025, Midwest Studies in Philosophy)

There is a thus a kind of amusement (typically expressed in laughter) that is experienced uniquely in interpersonal relationships, in the funny and mutual give-and-take that occurs only from the participant stance. And it’s that sort of amusement that disappears with the onset of quarrels, and which also signals their end.

The values of this sort of wisecracking are many and seriously underappreciated. First, it’s just plain fun, and it brings people together. People like being around funny people, and funny people like being around people who are amused by their funniness. The enjoyment in wisecracks is often shared. When offering exaggerated accounts of one’s own travails in a funny way, one invites sympathy, and one’s self-deprecating cracks enable bonding with those who’ve undergone similar travails. This and some other types of wisecracking greatly help people cope with the vicissitudes of life (I’ll make much hay over this point later). Wisecracks reduce social uncertainty and distance, and they tend to increase cooperation between people. They can also serve to enforce social norms and group boundaries. As Frances Hutcheson notes, when people are made fun of for their failure to live up to some norm, “the guilty are apt to be made sensible of their folly, more than by a bare grave admonition. . . . Men have been laughed out of faults which a sermon could not reform” (from Reflections Upon Laughter, quote in Morreall 1989: 36–40). Finally, wisecracking can test and alter relationships for the better. Reaching out to a relatively new acquaintance with a teasing wisecrack may, depending on her response, get you both over the hump to actual friendship (notice the odd but compelling remark, “I don’t know her well enough to tease her yet.”)

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    -VIDEO LECTURE: CFCP Public Lecture: Quarrels and Cracks (Professor David Shoemaker of Cornell University delivers the annual Conceptual Foundations of Conflict Project, 4/01/24)
    -VIDEO PODCAST: The Ethics of Dark Humor | David Shoemaker (Brain in a Vat, Jun 30, 2024)
    -PODCAST: 247. 'Wisecracks' - Can a Joke Go Too Far? (Preconceived)
    -VIDEO DISCUSSION: Culture Connection: “Sure, I’ll Join Your Cult”: An Evening with Actress and Comedian Maria Bamford (Queens Public Library, Apr 5, 2024)
    -AUDIO: David Shoemaker, Cornell University – Why Psychopaths Have Bad Senses of Humor (Academic Minute, 05/2/2023)
    -PODCAST: What is the Moral Line of Comedy? | David Shoemaker (New Books Network Book of the Day, Nov 14, 2024, NBN Book of the Day)
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    -
    -INTERVIEW: "Living a Wisecracking Life": David Shoemaker in conversation with Will Franken (Will Franken, The Philosopher)

Will Franken (WF): Let’s start with the basics of the book. What exactly are wisecracks, how do they differ from jokes, and why do you want to focus on them?

David Shoemaker (DS): All previous work on humour focuses on jokes. These are the familiar forms of humour that typically have set-ups and punchlines. We pass these along to each other, and comedians tell them to larger audiences. “A priest, a rabbi, and a duck walk into a bar,” that sort of thing. Jokes are performed, they are prepared, they are monologues, and, in our ordinary lives, they interrupt conversations, rather than being a part of conversations. What I’m interested in instead is the humour that is essentially interpersonal, the made-up-on-the-spot bits of back-and-forth banter, teasing, ball-busting, leg-pulling, and mockery that are part of our conversations with each other in everyday life. Wisecracks are by far the source of most of the humour in our lives, so they are worth studying for that reason alone. But they may also, as opposed to jokes, generate moral trouble, as sometimes what contributes to their funniness are things that we ordinarily think call for moral anger or blame, things like deception, meanness, cruelty, and the exploitation of problematic stereotypes. So wisecracks are where most of the funny is, but they are also where a lot of the moral trouble in humour can be found. I’m interested in that intersection.

    -PROFILE: A Project in Shared Humanity (Sam Vucic, 10/12/22, Sage School of Philosophy)
    -INTERVIEW: Philosopher mines the ethical line in caustic wisecracking (David Nutt, 5/28/24, Cornell Chronicle)

Q: Your book notes the difference between joke-telling and wisecracking. In a nutshell, what is the distinction and why are wisecracks the more interesting, morally pertinent subject?

A: Jokes are canned, prepackaged bits of humor typically involving familiar set-ups and punchlines (“Did you hear the one about...?). Jokes are monologues, interrupting the flow of conversations. Wisecracks, on the other hand, are part of conversations, and they include improvised bits of back-and-forth banter, teasing, leg-pulling, pranking and mockery. Wisecracks generate most of the amusement in our lives, in contrast with jokes. We make wisecracks with each other, but insofar as they are thus ways of treating each other, they can make moral trouble. They sometimes include deception (in leg-pulling), meanness (in mockery) and the exploitation of stereotypes (racial and gender humor). Jokes on the page do none of these things, so wisecracks are where I think all of the interesting moral action is located.

    -INTERVIEW: Holding people responsible through a system of blame, praise (Kate Blackwood , 11/18/24, Cornell Chronicle)

Q: What is unique about mockery, and when does it come up as a form of blame?

A: I think mockery is the key to seeing the symmetrical architecture of blame and praise, as it is the proper negative analog to complimenting types of praise. To mock someone is to make fun of them for failing with respect to some norm – so it carries out the enforcement function of blame.

In my recent book on humor and morality, “Wisecracks,” I have a chapter on mockery that explores what it is and how rife it is in our interpersonal lives, with friends and family, for example: We tease and mock each other all the time. But being laughed at for a failure is valuable in getting us to do better next time.

The great British moral philosopher Frances Hutcheson articulated this point well, noting that “men have been laughed out of faults that a sermon could not reform.” So true. And complimenting people (“Great job!”) is mockery’s positive counterpart, as complimenting someone highlights their success relative to some norm in a pleasing, enjoyable way – what I call the “buzz” of praise, as opposed to blame’s “sting.”

We mostly mock and compliment people for nonmoral failures and successes. If you miss an easy basketball shot, or your souffle turned out terribly, you may be the target of a close friend’s mockery, for those athletic or culinary failures. But this fact suggests that we tend to respond to moral failures and successes with different kinds of blame and praise. We don’t mock people who murder, after all. Our blaming responses to moral failures are, instead, a kind of anger, and our praising responses to moral goodness are a kind of gratitude.

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    -ESSAY: The Absurd (Thomas Nagel, The Journal of Philosophy)
    -ESSAY: A Tiny Essay on Taking Offense (Eva Brann, November 19th, 2018, Imaginative Conservative)
    -ESSAY: Ethical Taboo in Humorous Play (Lukas Myers, Feb 2025, The Journal of Value Inquiry)
    -VIDEO DISCUSSION: Lydia Amir, Hans-Georg Moeller, John Lombardini: "Philosophical Humor" Roundtable (Collaborative Learning, Jan 20, 2025)
    -ENTRY: Philosophy of Humor (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
    -ESSAY: No Laughing Matter (Karim Nader, ASA Newsletter) [pdf]
    -REVIEW: of Wisecracks: : On Humor and Morality in Everyday Life by David Shoemaker (Ben Wurgaft, The Chronicle Review)

In a book that manages to be densely argued and lighthearted at the same time, Shoemaker demonstrates that the philosophical questions wisecracks raise are largely about social morality, which is appropriate because wisecracks are intrinsically social things. How we crack wise together, you might say, is how we live together.

Shoemaker responds to a small philosophical literature on humor, most of which considers formal, stand-alone jokes. Philosophers of humor sometimes consider “the logical or semantic structure” of jokes, as Shoemaker puts it, and claim to discern our reasons for laughing at them. This is possible because jokes can be transcribed without too much semantic loss: They make sense when written down. By contrast, what Shoemaker calls “wisecracks” — casual jests, lighthearted banter, casual wordplay, and gentle teasing — make little sense when reproduced later on a page. You could think of a joke as a little script designed to yield a laugh, a brief performance you could give at a party, or on a stage. The audience’s response makes it communal, in a loose sense, but it’s not as deeply collaborative as cracking wise with friends. Wisecracks are more like improvisations, and they require the active participation of an interlocutor. They are “made, not told,” as Shoemaker points out on his very first page.

    -REVIEW: of Wisecracks (Publishers Weekly)
    -REVIEW: of Wisecracks (Kieran Setiya, The Atlantic)
    -REVIEW: of Wisecracks: Can jokes in terrible taste ever be funny?: Wisecracks is clearly the work of an academic philosopher adept at teasing out fine distinctions between “offenses” and “harms” (Matthew Reisz, The Critic)
    -REVIEW: of Wisecracks (David Wineberg, The Straight Dope)
    -REVIEW: of Wisecracks: Humor and Morality in Everyday Life (Steven Gimbel, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)
    -REVIEW: of Wisecracks (Alfred Archer, The Philosophical Quarterly
    -REVIEW: Who understands wisecracks better: this self-appointed expert, or me? You decide. (David Wineberg, May 18, 2024, Medium)
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of
    -REVIEW: of David Shoemaker, Responsibility from the Margins (Matthew Talbert, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)
    -REVIEW: of Personal Identity and Ethics: A Brief Introduction by David Shoemaker ( Amy Kind, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)
    -REVIEW: of The Nature of Moral Responsibility: New Essays Randolph Clarke, Michael McKenna, and Angela M. Smith (eds.) (Benjamin Mitchell-Yellin, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)
    -REVIEW: of Moral Psychology and Human Agency: Philosophical Essays on the Science of Ethics Justin D'Arms and Daniel Jacobson (eds.) (David Faraci, Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews)
    -REVIEW: of

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